Aura: Fate of the Ages Review

Summary

Rating:

Overall:Fantastic graphics, detailed 3D characters, challenging-yet-solvable, puzzles, good animations, and excellent supporting music easily overcome a few minor interface problems, and a fairly superficial story line

Aura: Fate of the Ages is an adventure game in the genre of
the Myst or Schizm series. According to an ancient
legend, The Keepers possess the sacred rings of the Worlds. The legend
states that these rings provide the holder with the ability to travel
to parallel worlds, where special artifacts exist. And whoever brings
these rings together with the artifacts from the various worlds will
achieve great power and immortality. You are Umang, a young man sent
on a quest to find these special artifacts and unite them with the
rings.

Like many other recent adventure games, Aura has fairly
significant hardware requirements, particularly hard disk space. The
only installation option requires 2GB of hard disk space, with a
recommendation of 2.5GB. The good news is that once Aura is
installed, the second and third CD-ROM can be put away, and the game
can be played entirely with the first CD-ROM in the drive. The
installation went smoothly (although it took about 20 minutes to load
the 2GB of files to my hard disk); and I found almost no difficulties,
anomalies, or other issues in firing up and playing the game.

Based on previews, demos, and pre-release screenshots I had seen, my
expectations for Aura were very high. Nor was I
disappointed. As in many similar adventure games, the user interface
is first-person, point-and-click. Individual scenes allow full
360-degree panning (except while in some of the puzzle close-up
views); and transitions between scenes are done in a
Myst-like dissolve from one scene to the next. Changes in the
cursor indicate available directions of movement, and simply clicking
on those spots produces the desired movement. Similarly, picking up
objects, or performing actions (e.g., opening a door, flipping a
switch) is accomplished by clicking on those objects at the
appropriate time.

As far as the game itself, the first thing that is noticeable in
Aura is the lushness of the scenery. The artists at Streko
Graphics did an oustanding job of designing 3D scenes, and populating
them at an incredibly detailed level. This not only contributed to
the beauty (and awesomeness) of the game, it also provided a certain
level of additional "game play", as many of the scenes contained
dozens of detailed rendered objects, all of which looked like they
just might be important to the game -- and yet, most of the detail was
simply to lend realism. Only after doing extensive exploring would it
turn out that perhaps only one single object was actually involved in
the game play. Yet searching for that one object was more often than
not a rewarding experience, merely in terms of taking time to fully
explore the intricate worlds created by the Aura developers.

The scenery, as might be expected, is frequently surrealistic, giving
the graphic artists even further opportunities to exhibit their
skills. Much of the game takes place outdoors, with bright sunlight,
vibrant colors, and high contrast. The detailed texture mapping lent
further realism to the scenes, and the objects contained in
them. Exploring the various worlds of Aura was quite a treat.

The inventory is a very simple one. Items picked up immediately go
into inventory, and there is no ability for multiple items to act upon
each other within the inventory. The use of many of the items is
intuitively obvious; others, however, have no apparent connection with
anything in the game, requiring a certain degree of
"try-each-inventory-item-on-this-active-spot" type of playing.

This brings up a very important factor about Aura. The game
is laden with puzzles -- with a fine balance between inventory puzzles
and pure logic puzzles. However, the vast majority of puzzles -- of
both kinds -- should be considered highly intuitive
puzzles. You won't find any pure mathematical puzzles, no slider
puzzles, no obvious lock-and-key puzzles, or anything else that looks
vaguely familiar. But you will spend a lot of time thinking
things like "There has to be a reason for these switches
here, and there's nothing else to tell me about them, so I have to
make some inferences."

The story line is a bit weak, although it is not really necessary to
enjoy Aura as an adventure-puzzle game. Other than the fact
that Umang (you, the player) is trying to find certain sacred objects,
and return them to their rightful place, the basic story (such as it
is) simply allows you to explore one world after another (in a clearly
serial fashion), solve enough puzzles in each location to obtain the
appropriate objects, and move on to the next location. That's actually
oversimplification, but the focus is clearly on the puzzles. What I
found to be quite interesting, though, is that -- despite the highly
intuitive nature of most of the puzzles -- they were all "solvable".
None produced that awful feeling that most adventure gamers hate,
when, after finally solving a particular puzzle, the primary emotional
response is "That sure was stupid! Who would ever have thought of
that???" Instead, there are clear clues to virtually every
puzzle in the game. In fact, as I played the game, there were several
puzzles that I solved purely by trial and error (disappointed, at the
time, that the game hadn't given me enough clues to fully solve it),
only to find out later that I had missed an obvious clue that would
have made the solving much easier.

Toward the end of the game, the last few puzzles seemed to deteriorate
slightly in this regard, moving away from the clear intuitive, logic
puzzles that had become the hallmark of the rest of the game. The
earlier puzzles were cleverly crafted -- and aided by some very
imaginative and cunning clues. There were very few clues to the last
couple of puzzles; it was almost as if there had not been quite enough
time to fully flesh out the development and implementation of those
last few puzzles.

I've already commented on the graphics, and I'll add that the audio
portion of the game was also remarkable. In addition to ambient sounds
(with full panning sound as I pivoted nearby a sound source, such as
running water or a crackling fire), the background music was
incredible. If the game had come with an additional CD of just the
background music, I think I could listen to it for some time. Moving
from pastoral to intense, from happy to stressful, the music
definitely contributed to the mood throughout the game. Even the
voicing of the instruments was done with a careful eye (ear?) to the
resultant effect.

One technical problem I had with the game was an occasional instance
where a mouse click would not be picked up by the game, and I had to
click a second time. This became especially frustrating when, after
getting used to the problem, I would often click a second time if I
didn't get an immediate result the first time, only to discover that
the game had picked up both clicks
-- and I had now moved farther than I intended.

There were one or two other minor interface "glitches", as well, but
only one that caused some gameplay problems. There are numerous
cut-scenes in the game, many of which are dialogues between your
character, Umang, and another character in the game. Frequently, there
is important information contained in those dialogues. However, once a
particular cut scene has been played, it cannot be replayed, without
reloading a saved game. There is no record kept of the conversations
which the player can go back to, and refer to what was said. To make
matters worse, any of these cut-scenes can be terminated by typing any
keyboard key. In my particular case, I was playing on a system whose
volume is controlled via keyboard keys. I lost count of the number of
times that a cut scene would begin, the volume would be too low, and
involuntarily I would hit my volume key -- only to have the entire cut
scene terminated, and have to restore a saved game and replay to that
point. It would have been much less frustrating, had the developers
limited the "terminate cut-scene" key to a single, unique keystroke.

Also, during the dialogues, it is fairly common to show close-up shots
of Umang or another character. While the characters are rendered quite
well, for the most part, Streko needs to do a little bit more work on
animating the mouth movements. Most of the characters hardly moved
their lips when they talked; and when they did, it was reminiscent of
a low-budget Saturday-morning cartoon.

There is only one point in the game where your character can "die".
Yet the game is "user-friendly" enough to simply put up a "Try Again"
message, and return you to the point immediately before where you made
the death-inducing decision. In this manner, there is really no chance
of losing unsaved progress in a game. Saving games, however, is quite
simple, and you can save an unlimited number of games. Each will be
saved, along with an image representing the current location, and a
date/time stamp. It is also quite easy to locate saved games and
re-load them for further play.

Finally, without giving anything away, I'll say that the ending of the
game seems to do more than just hint at a sequel. The player is
presented with a closing cut scene that is reminiscent of a TV soap
opera -- not only indicating that there are still "worlds to conquer
and puzzles to solve", but with an added element of conflict
introduced right at the very end, unbeknownst even to Umang, the main
character.

In summary, I found Aura to be quite entertaining, and mildly
challenging. The game provided about 20-25 hours of enjoyable play
time, the graphics and 3D renderings are wonderful, and the sound
track is very supportive of the game. Those who consider themselves
"intuiters" will especially appreciate the game. I would look forward
to any sequel with great anticipation.